Testing an upgrade?

[butchjax]

Hi,
I previously tried to upgrade from 3.7.5 to 3.8.2. It crashed my entire site, front and back end. My hosts had to restore from backup because I had no access anywhere. I can't have that happen again, but I don't know what caused it. Is there a way to test an upgrade besides just creating a copy? I don't know how to do that myself. (I know I should, but I'm getting older and busier so haven't had time to figure it out).

I did look at the Joomla Update page under components and I'm getting warnings about the php upload being set to low, but the only php.ini file is set a lot higher than 2 mb. Could that alone cause the update to fail and crash the site? If so, I can get my host to change that for the 3rd time.

It also could be from a stupid hack that happened. I paid someone to clean it up, and everything appeared fine, but there are a lot of backup versions in the file manager and other confusing folders. I'm at a loss.

I'm getting paranoid about this. Any help is appreciated.

[itoctopus]

The only way to get through this thing cleanly is to make a copy of your site, update the copy, and fix any issues on the copy, and then replace the site with the copy. It is not fun, but if you don't want to see errors on your site after you update, then this is the best way.

[leolam]

Though basically correct you can use a service as myjoomla.com (first scan is free) and ask Phil Taylor (myjoomla) or other pro's to help you. This avoids building from scratch as suggested

Leo

[Per Yngve Berg]

Did you increase both max_upload_size and max_post_size?

[leolam]

@butchajax Follow what Per said and ask your host to set these values at least to 32 MB

Next never evenr leave backups on your site. What is your site crashes like now or your disk crashes on the server?
Always download a backup to your local environment and/or to a Cloud platform like Amazon S3 (insane cheap) so you have always access (assuming you pay your bills....--> yes it happens ....)

Leo

[Webdongle]

Before you do anything else
Install https://extensions.joomla.org/extension/akeeba-backup/
Make a backup and test it on localhost.

Also please run viewtopic.php?f=621&t=582860 on the server and post the results here.